How Is Coffee Grown? 15 Steps To Coffee From Bean To Cup [With Infographic]

Growing coffee isn’t as simple as throwing a few seeds on the ground and coming back a few years later.

Our journey from seed to cup actually doesn’t even start in the field where the coffee plants will eventually grow. Once harvested, some of the green coffee beans are kept to be used as seeds for the next crop of coffee trees.

These seeds spend their first year planted in nurseries (1) where they are carefully tended, watered and sheltered from the sun. Once they grow to between 18 and 24 inches, they’re tough enough to withstand the full sun and are removed from the nursery and planted in the field.

Left to their own devices these trees could grow as high as 20 feet but that would make harvesting a little tricky so they are generally pruned to around 8 to 10 feet. It takes between 3 to 5 years before the tree begins to produce coffee berries, also known as cherries because of their shape and red color.

Once ripe, these berries have a bright, deep red skin that covers a fleshy pulp and two little coffee beans in the center encased in a protective skin.

Unlike a lot of other cash crops, coffee is normally grown on relatively small pieces of land by small-scale farmers.

When it comes to harvesting it’s a community affair with the whole family, friends and other farmers getting stuck in to help with the picking.

While there is a general time that the berries ripen, they tend to do it in stages which means that you can’t pick the whole lot at once.

This means that you’ve got to go out and pick the ripe berries, come back 8 to 10 days later to pick the next ones (2), and then come back another 8 to 10 days later to get the stragglers.

The majority of coffee farms in other parts of the world are on landscapes that don’t allow for mechanical harvesting. This makes it a fairly labor intensive business and calls for good eyes and nimble fingers.

The advantage of picking by hand is that it allows for a more selective harvest. Being able to pick the berries only once they’re good and ready to go makes for better quality coffee. Unripe berries will have poorly developed beans and these will result in coffee with a bitter taste and sharp odor.

Well harvest coffee makes a huge difference to the final taste. Read more on the best coffee beans here.

Perfectly ripe berries will have well-formed beans with higher oil and lower acid content. This will give you the smooth, fragrant experience you want from your morning cup of sanity restorative. It’s tough work, though.

On average a good picker will pick around 100 to 200 pounds of coffee cherries a day and only 20% of that weight will eventually become coffee.

What we’re really after are the two little beans at the center of the fruit.

To ensure that only the best beans pass onto the next step the coffee cherries are first sorted. There are a few ways to do this.

The simplest sorting that happens is by hand but winnowing the beans or using a large sieve to remove debris, stones, and twigs is also used.

To make absolutely sure that only ripe, good berries are used, the processor may also sort by water immersion. The cherries are thrown into a tank of water and the density difference between ripe and unripe cherries makes the unripe ones float to the top for easy extraction.

This is the more modern, quicker process but it uses a lot of water. It has become the most common way of fermenting coffee.

The pulped beans are sorted by size and then thrown into fermentation tanks.

After 12 to 48 hours of fermentation in the tank, the naturally occurring enzymes dissolve the layer of mucilage surrounding the beans.

The beans are then washed thoroughly in fresh water to stop the fermentation process and to remove the last of the pulp.

This leaves the beans covered in just a thin sheath, or parchment, called the endocarp.

If the cherries went through the semi-wash or dry process then it’s at this point that the beans both dry out and ferment at the same time. The drying is either done mechanically or by laying them out on a large, flat space in the sun.

The cherries are raked regularly throughout the day to get them to dry evenly and to make sure that they don’t develop mold or bacteria. If it looks like it might rain the farmer has to run around frantically to cover the cherries.

It normally takes around 2 to 4 weeks until they dry to the point where they have an 11% to 12% moisture content.

Once properly dried you’re left with parchment coffee which is the beans with just the parchment surrounding them or what’s left of the bits of dried fruit and skin if they were dry processed.

In this form, the coffee can be stored for several months or even years depending on the temperature and humidity. There has been some demand for “aged” green coffees but for the most part, the beans are sent off for milling as soon as possible.

For the time that they are in storage they are put into sacks and stored on pallets in a way that allows for good airflow and that keeps them away from any moisture.

Before sending the whole batch off for roasting the coffee needs to be graded. Some fortunate people actually get paid to taste coffee and call it work.

After staring sagely at the beans for a while they make an initial judgment of the quality of the coffee based on the appearance of the beans. Then it’s on to the tasting, or cupping.

A sample of the beans will be roasted in a laboratory roaster, ground and then infused in boiling water. After letting it stand for a few minutes the cupper (taster) will then smell and taste the coffee.

He’ll tell you he’s not merely smelling it but “nosing” the coffee and that slurping he does while tasting is entirely necessary.

Regardless, the end result of this theatrics is that the coffee is graded as to its quality and suitability for blending with other coffees.

Once graded it’s a matter of planes, trains, and automobiles to get the coffee where it’s needed. Starting in bulk, the green beans will eventually be sold off in smaller batches to different coffee traders and distributors until it finally ends up at your local coffee roastery.

It’s not just about transport, though. The more links in the distribution chain, the further the consumer is removed from the producer. This can result in high margins for the middlemen and a lower price to the farmer.

It can also obscure the ethical standards that were adhered to in the production of the coffee. To combat this, organizations have been set up to promote direct trade and fair trade coffee.

When the beans finally get nearer to where they will be consumed, it’s time to fire up the roaster.

This isn’t just a matter of flipping a switch and waiting for the timer to go off once it’s done. Roasting coffee is part science and part art. Inside those raw coffee beans is the potential to make a great cup of coffee.

The roasting process will either realize that potential or leave us wondering what might have….bean. *cough*

The trick is to take the acidity and flavors of each individual batch into account and then regulate the roasting temperature and duration to balance or enhance these. Typically this involves rotating them in a roaster that gets up to around 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once the coffee is roasted the clock starts ticking.

You’ve got a limited time to grind those beans and get a delicious cup of coffee from them. It’s not only time that’s against you but air, moisture and UV rays all conspire to undo all the hard work that’s lead up to this point.

Because of this, the packaging that the roasted beans are stored in is more than just a marketing exercise. To protect the beans from air and moisture the packaging is sealed really well so that even if it’s on the shelf for a few weeks the beans will still be fresh once the seal is broken.

When people speak of the “daily grind” it’s not usually a good thing. When it comes to coffee, though, the sound of those grinders preparing the beans for the final stages is music to our ears.

How finely the beans are ground depends on the method that will be used to brew the coffee.

If you’re going to be using a French Press or a vacuum coffee maker then the grind would be fairly coarse. For drip coffee makers you’d need a medium to medium / fine grind.

If you’re using a stove top espresso pot or an espresso machine then the grind would be fine to super fine.

If you’re grinding your own beans and you don’t need too fine a grind then a blade grinder will do the trick and doesn’t cost too much. You need to guesstimate how long to let it grind for until the coffee is as fine as you need it to be. A bit of trial and error and you’re sorted.

For more consistent and finer grinds the beans need to be ground in a burr grinder. The sound of the burr grinder is far easier on the ears if you’ve just woken up and the consistent grind allows for more efficient extraction when brewing.

Also, because the coarseness of the grind is dialed into the settings on the grinder there’s no need to push a button and count “One Mississippi, two Mississippi,…” like you need to with the blade grinder.

After grinding the beans it’s straight to the brewer with them. Whether the coffee is brewed in an espresso machine at your local coffee shop or the drip machine in your kitchen, this is make or break time.

It’s in this final stage where all the hard work that went before either culminates in a cup of amazing coffee or is undone by lousy pressure or wrong water temperature.

It’s here where the blood, sweat, and tears of the coffee farmer can be validated by a symphony of flavors, or be dashed by a barista distracted by that cute waitress in the short skirt.

At the end of the brewing stage, after already discarding the fruit of the cherry 10 thousand miles away, finally, the ground up remains of the beans are also thrown into the bin, leaving only the flavors that were once locked inside in the bottom of a dark cup.

At last.

After 14 steps and thousands of miles, what was once a little bean inside a berry near the equator (8) is now reduced to a collection of flavors and fragrances contained in a hot beverage that has made civilized life as we know it possible.

Or at least bearable.

The relief, satisfaction, and emotions that a rich and flavorful cup of coffee can result in transcends the olfactory senses and taste buds. As you drink it you’re sure that science has a perfectly bland explanation for what is happening to the synapses in your brain but it feels more like magic. More ethereal.

The next time you’re enjoying your espresso, cold brew, or cortado, spare a thought for the amount of work that went into getting it to you.